Beneath Me
by rubygoddess
Summary: Nice, normal (kind of) Spuffiness; Buffy and Spike are happily together, here's a look-see into a night spent in. High on the fluffiness factor, Please R/R! You know you want to!


Disclaimer: Not mine, including that finger lickin' goodliness of a man that is Spike. A thousand years of teary heartbreak will never amend this sad fact.  
  
Summary: A bit o' fluff is all it is. Spuffer fluff. If I was talking extreme Scooby, I'd combine it and get Spluffiness. We Buffy fans are a strange bunch aren't we? Story doesn't really have a point, but doesn't everyone just like to see a happy Buffy and Spike when they can? Set awhile after S6, I guess realistically enough so that Buffy gets over whatever the hell she's denying, takes an enema, and hooks up with the guy we all know she wants.  
  
Feedback: I can't make you, but I can cry about not being awash in praise by all you lovely readers. No really, I would appreciate it, like anyone else would. So please pretty please! Here or Buggers267@aol.com  
  
Rating: I don't get much higher than PG-13, I just don't have the mind for what happens past that.  
  
A/N: Not really a piece intended to be continued . . . unless I get enough reviews that want otherwise that is, which if then, I might make it a series of vignettes or something. (And again, that'd be really nice! The reviews I mean) I have other fics to fill up my plate, and while I'm here, I might as well shamelessly self promote those as well. I'm writing one called "Fortunate Son" (a sort of AU piece with a teenage Spike, need I say more?) and another one called "Venus Rising" (set AU after "Wrecked" in Season 6). Oh, and I'm co-writing a fic with my friend ArtemisKai called "Precious Gifts" (set beginning of Season 7). If you want to find the other two, just search for my penname! The other one is found under ArtemisKai's. Hope you check them out!  
  
  
  
"Auggh!"  
  
Spike looked up from his plate, a small snarl of meat curling over his lip. He glanced at a disgusted Buffy, who's face was curled into a million wrinkles of girlish revulsion and tried to murmur a innocent "What?", but with his mouth full it came out more of a "Mmphah?"  
  
Buffy waved a perfectly pink manicured nail in the direction of his steaming dish of sausage. "Auggh," she repeated, eyes wincing in efforts to block the horrendous display from her viewage. " . . . auggh for . . . THAT."  
  
Spike gazed down at his plate of blood sausage confoundly. "Again, I say what. It's food, just like whatever the hell you're eating." He motioned towards the bowl of leafy greens, barely dressed with a scant coat of low- fat dressing and made a face. "Wait I take it back. Could hardly call that rabbit's dribble food."  
  
"Hey, at least I know for sure that my dinner didn't start life as a frollicking furry little creature named Bambi!"  
  
He snorted with bemused impatience. Sometimes she would randomly pick the days when she felt like playing the part of self-righteous Earth Mother, clearing the pantry of Ho-Hos and Doritos in favor of granola and kashi puffed rice. Her fits of politically nutritional consciousness were usually transient, but with no help from Willow. She occasionally dragged Buffy to those Wiccan woman-power type meetings that were more about prancing around thinking about your estrogen power center and the inherent karmic value of peanuts than magic, and they messed Buffy's mind up good, at least Spike thought so. For awhile now, he had been meaning to tell Willow to stop taking her to the meetings. When a man wakes up to find his Ding-Dongs up and gone, he's gotta take all the action he can, Spike reasoned. Pursing up his lips, he delivered his ever-famous smirk to his still-sickened girlfriend as he swirled the sopping meat around on his plate.  
  
"Oh please Slayer, stop getting all squeamish. I mean, Chosen One aren't you? You don't want to leave your ordained predecessors deeply shamed do you? Besides, if this was a juicy Big Mac, you wouldn't give a toss what its fluffy animal incarnate was, you'd be too busy licking the beef juice dribbling down your chin."  
  
Buffy frowned primly in response to his disgusting description. "Excuse me, but THAT----" she always spoke in capital letters when it came to his diet. "---Is so far removed from the decency of a hamburger, it creates a whole new world of disgustingness."  
  
Spike just responded by growling fiercely, stabbing the remaining meat on the plate with his fork and ripping it from the cutlery with his teeth and a glinting smile. "Say it baby," he grinned darkly, his voice deep and breathy. "I'm still the Big Bad."  
  
Buffy rolled her eyes. There he went on one of his villianish ego-trips again, trying to convince himself he was still relevant to the world of deviants and evilness. Lately, the scariest thing the souled vampire ever resembled was Count Chocula. "Big Bad? I don't think so, honey." She cocked her head, surveying him casually. "Little Bad. Maybe Middle-sized Bad at the most."  
  
He slammed his fork down in indignation. "Hey, you and I both know there ain't NOTHING little about me." Suggestive arch of eyebrow and Buffy conceded a small smile, the corner of her mouth shooting upwards seductively.  
  
"I take it back, you ARE the Big Bad, making do with the wickedness to spare," she said, voice silken and velvety with the slightest tint of patronization.  
  
"Damn straight," he replied stolidly, choosing to ignore the tint. Finished with his meal and getting up from his chair, he was still cultured enough to dab his face clean and tuck the chair under the table neatly before heading to the kitchen with the dishes.  
  
He never asked whether Buffy preferred him to do the dishes, after a few post-dinner grumblings on the part of both Summers sisters, he figured he save the three much headache and wash the sodding dishes himself. Wasn't rocket science, and hey, he had the time. Wasn't going anywhere. Had all bloody eternity to don dish gloves and scrub a couple plates down. Besides he liked doing domestic things as such. Made him feel . . . well it put a sense of normality into his existence that was so freakish to begin with. He liked to savor the moments when he scrubbed away, listening only the relaxing trickling of the faucet, the soft swish of the dishwasher, and the quiet padding of Buffy's feet as she fussed about him. These would be the things he would remember when his time would finally come, his existence eradicated. Not his evil exploits, his wild adventures into iniquity and sinfulness, but THIS . . . he would hold onto the memories of soaking Buffy's sunflower printed dishes in the sink as she sweetly hummed a tune while reading the newspaper on the kitchen island behind him forever.  
  
He stood, washing the dishes and gnawing on a toothpick as Buffy sidled up to him, wrapping her arms around his slim waist. They fit comfortably there, in the concave space between his hips and waist, as if they belonged there always. Funny how his body could be so hard, yet allowed hers to melt so beautifully into it. Laying the side of her face peacefully into his back, splaying golden locks over his shoulders, she sighed blissfully as he enjoyed the wafting aroma of vanilla radiating from her presence.  
  
"It's nice to have the house to ourselves," she murmured, her face still half buried in his blue cotton shirt, her hands dancing up and down his sides.  
  
"Hmmm," he mumbled back, not feeling the need to articulate the glowing contentment he presently felt.  
  
"I mean, it's one of those rare nights when Dawn isn't puttering about the house, goose-stepping and slamming doors. Or the Scoobies don't come stomping in with dire portents or news of imminent apocalypse. Can get kinda old eventually."  
  
"And if only you let me kill them all those years ago like I wanted, we wouldn't ever have the problem of unwanted house guests," he replied snarkily, rubbing a dish aggressively with a reflective smile.  
  
"Hey, you had the chances buddy, I wasn't on your tail 24-7. Coulda made Willow and Xander your biteables when they were all hostage-y."  
  
Spike turned halfway around and cocked his head at her. "Funny how you add a 'y' to anything and think it constitutes as the English language."  
  
Buffy shrugged. "It's the Buffy Summers version of the English language. It's slayer language. It's slanguage. Another hint, word smushage is big too."  
  
"Smushage," he repeated, twisting his face into affectionate scorn. "You are a shameless desecrator of all the literary efforts of Shakespeare, Keats, Coleridge----"  
  
"But that's why you love me right?" She interrupted before it turned into another session of Classical English Literature 101, taught by Professor William the Bloody Poet.  
  
He twisted his long arms around her, resting his hands in the small of her back. He gave her a cocky grin. "No, I love you 'cause you're such a fox in the sack."  
  
She smacked one of his outrageously gorgeous cheekbones playfully. "Pig."  
  
"Saucy wench."  
  
"Villainous demon," she whispered, bridging the gap between them slowly, leaning in further, feeling the distance between them useless.  
  
"Murderous harpy," he replied, leaning down as well, her breath warming the coolness of his waiting lips.  
  
"Well you're beneath me," she continued teasing, her lips dancing inches away from his. Suddenly he drew back sharply and paused. His lips pursed, and his eyes looked up at nothing in particular agitatedly. Finally, he let her go roughly and returned to washing the dishes. Confused and hurt, she rubbed her arm where he had wrenched away from her and stared at his back with a frown.  
  
"What's the matter?" she asked softly.  
  
"S'nothing." His voice was gruff, and the dishes were making more clatter than usual. He was concentrating on the sudsy glasses and plates with fervency.  
  
"Along with being the Big Bad, you are one of the most pathological liars I know, Spike," Buffy sighed. "Now spill." She placed a gentle hand of the white bulge of muscle of his arm, but he shrugged it off. Buffy's frown deepened. Tilting her head to the side, she bit her lip and gazed at him softly. "Tell me," she said plaintively, sounding like a child.  
  
Spike turned and immediately, his resolve broke. Wide-eyes forest-green eyes, pouting, half-chewed lips, a halo of sunlit curls, a maddening face of sweetness; he was done for. What was the point in even starting? He never got to properly play the part of righteously indignant, injured party with her; she was too lovely an injurer for that. He sighed and turned again. "What do you think it is?" he said, grumpiness maintained.  
  
Buffy searched her mind for anything hurtful she had said in the last two minutes. But of course they had been calling each other names out of teasing, how could she distinguish the point where it turned from loving chiding to just plain chiding? She wavered and Spike got impatient.  
  
"Are you THAT oblivious woman?" he exploded. "How about the whole 'you're beneath me' bit?"  
  
Buffy softened, suddenly understanding. "Oh that. Spike, you knew I was just kidding----"  
  
"Yeah, but there was a time when you weren't kidding. You thought it true, you thought I was truly a monster not worthy more than piss."  
  
"I never really thought that. I might have said that, I might have convinced myself, tried to hammer it into my brain again and again, but somewhere deep inside, I knew it wasn't true. Truth was, I was so scared that I was beneath YOU, beneath everyone, I had to play Super-Bitch to try and convince myself that it wasn't true." She looked at him more seriously and apologetically. "I really treated you horrible Spike, you, the------" she paused and went over to him, cupping his face in a loving hand. "The only one in the world who was meant for me, my lover, my friend, my everything."  
  
He wavered, but furrowed his brows tightly in resistance. "You can be so deceptively saccharine when you want to be, darling."  
  
She leaned over and bit his ear, causing him to shiver off some of the hostility in pleasure. "I've forfeited my reign as Queen of Denial," she said in a murky, hushed voice. "Everything I just said is true."  
  
He took a step back from her, two hands placed firmly on either of her arms to keep her away from him. "Face it. You wouldn't even say it if it weren't for the soul. That just makes everything fit into a nice neat little package, doesn't it? If it weren't the soddin' soul, I'd be beneath you just the same."  
  
"I'll admit it Spike. Before the soul, it was hard. I don't know if I would have truly let myself love you completely the way I do now. You were on the edge----you weren't living up to what you could be. But I saw the seedlings of what was there, the goodness, the sweetness, the humanity. And yes, I think I did fall in love with that part of you. But I didn't love the monster you could be---even though you weren't in full monster-mode via the chip. And I know that was narrow-minded of me to see you only in those terms, but I couldn't help it. You couldn't help what you were, you didn't need a soul to love, but you DID need a soul to stop living on such the fine line between destruction and humanity. I couldn't walk that line with you. You deserved more than to walk it to."  
  
Spike pondered this for a moment, quieting down a bit without as much anger. Finally he looked back up at Buffy and pierced her with his sapphire pupils earnestly. "You're right Buffy, I am beneath you."  
  
Buffy shook her head gently. "Don't say that Spike----"  
  
"It's true. I'm a useless prat, a waste a'space, the willing murderer of helpless and countless innocents----"  
  
Buffy kissed him on the nose and patted his chest. "Don't brood honey, it does not flatter."  
  
Spike shook his head resolutely. "This is honesty here, it's not like Peaches' whine-apoloozas, this is real."  
  
Buffy put a finger to his soft lips and shook her head again. Bringing her head down, she took one of his hands into hers and leant down to press a kiss to it. "This is real," she whispered. Letting go of his hand, she concentrated on the side of his face, breezing a feather-light touch to it gently. She leant over to kiss it as well. "This is real," she repeated. Finally, inching her face down so that her lips were level with his, she fused her lips to his, tongues dancing in their expressively tender way. After they finished, she still had her forehead against his, eyelids closed. "This is real," she breathed raggedly once more.  
  
Spike, finally speechless, slumped against the woman he loved with his whole being, his head buried in her neck. She brought her head back up and let go of him gently, easing out of his embrace and began to walk away.  
  
Dismayed that his lover had manage to slither out of his arms as easily as she used to, he frowned at her worriedly.  
  
"Where are YOU going?"  
  
Buffy gave him a wicked smile. "I changed my mind. I've decided that maybe you're right. Maybe you are still beneath me. Care to go upstairs and test that theory?"  
  
Spike grinned back, a mixture of almost angelic beauty and reprehensible impiety. "I'm right behind you, Slayer," he replied, predatorily running to catch her as she shrieked with laughter, scrambling up the stairs.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Another AN: Well? Worth continuing? I left it at a place that could be considered the end. Hell, it was fun to write anyway, I was avoiding AP Biolody homework and procrastination DOES breed inspiration. Anyway, hoped you enjoyed?=! 


End file.
